Hello.
You are on my Fix Your Back Pain Page
- one page of my large free web site DrBookspan.com.
My work is researchin human physiology and performance
in extreme environments, and developing evidence-based sports medicine methods
that you can use yourself, right away, to fix your back pain, neck pain,
knee pain, other injuries, learn smarter stretches, and make your life better,
faster, smarter, and sometimes funnier. I
make my web site available for a better world.

This
pageshows you how to spot and stop several causes
of lower back pain. Then the pain stops and your back can heal. This is
different from doing exercises or taking medicines and supplements, while
continuing to cause the same pain. You don't need to stop activity. With
healthy movement, you can do more than before.

Lower
back pain can be easy to fix.
This is a Get-Started-Right-Now
summary, with a wealth of knowledge still to give. See me for appointments
and classes and read my books
for more. More about me in Adventures.

Not
All Exercise Is Good Medicine. It's
not health care if it's not healthy. Much cost, time, and worry currently
spent in medical treatments and common therapies and posture rules and devices
are unnecessary and often unhealthful. I spent years in the lab researching
and checking methods - evidence-based, primary source research - and put
the results here on my web site as a public service for the benefit of the
world. Get better and the world will be better.

Find
Main navigation links (Site Map) for more of my web site at the bottom of
this and every page, along with Buttons to LIKETWEET and SHARE.

Answers In A Nutshell

My
work is not "alternative medicine." This is evidence-based sports
medicine techniques, applied to real life - where you actually need it.
I consider it simple, common sense, standard of care.

Back
pain is not a disease or "condition" or something that once
you have, you have it for life. It is usually an injury like a sprained
ankle, that with a little common sense and information, can stop, can
heal, and you can be better than before.

Surgery,
shots, extended medical treatments, and bed rest have not been shown to
be a healthy effective way to relieve back pain. You can fix most pain
without them.

You
do not need to give up impact activities like running or martial arts,
give up weights or heavy occupational work, or activities you love to
do. Not all exercise is healthy, just like not all foods - some are junk.
This article shows you how to change your movement habits to healthy ones,
You will get the built in exercise you need for health while you prevent
the causes of most back pain. This is different from doing sets and reps
of exercises, then going back to injurious daily habits.

Back
muscle pain, discs that degenerate bulge or herniate, facet injury, narrowing,
and most joint injury are not the cause of the problem - they are the
RESULT of what you are doing to hurt your back - things you can fix yourself.
Even when inflammation or immune response are identified, they are results,
not causes. This article will show you how to understand and fix causes,
instead of using drugs and surgery for the results.

You
may have several causes of pain. If you fix only some of them, you will
fix only some of your pain. The answer is not to continue on, missing
the rest, saying "it just takes time." Don't allow the other
damaging causes to continue. Check for other causes you may have missed
and fix them all. Then you will stop all pain, and instead of alternating
feeling better from fixing one thing and hurting from other causes, wondering
why you have intermittent results, you fix all and heal all and get back
to your life stronger and better than before.

You
do not need special chairs, beds, devices, or gimmicks to "put you"
into any specific posture or position.

Many
common medicines and prescription drugs can cause back and body pain.
Several popular exercises often worsen pain or cause it in the first place,
including certain hamstring stretches and ab exercises. Many commercial
chair posture-changing devices and foot orthotics produce more pain and
are not needed in the first place. Un-needed treatments and surgeries
are done - causing more pain and reduction in physical ability. Easy changes
can stop the need for harmful medicines.

Not
all back pain is from the results that show on an x-ray or other test
or scan. You are not doomed by scan results

Study
of posture rules, exercises, and devices has shown they have made as much
or more pain and damage as slouching, and do not create healthy movement.
They are also no fun. First, healthy lengths during movement needs to
be learned. Then all daily movement builds-in healthy comfortable fun
habit.

This
article summarizes all the above. Make sure you understand the concepts
(many highlighted in green). This
is not posture (a static rigid concept to most), but functional body mechanics,
good ergonomics, healthy movement mechanics, functional movement. The
end of this article (where it says "More fun...") gives many
helpful links to pages on this site for more help. The Bottom of every
page on my web site gives main navigation links.

If
you have lower back pain from long standing, walking, and running, and
you feel better to sit or lean over, especially if you hurt more to
lie flat face up or down, start with my separate article to fix
standing pain, then come back here for the rest. If you have back
pain from several causes including facet, you can start here, then go
to the fix standing pain article.

Matt
had severe disc injury. Several doctor opinions were for surgery. Shortly after
working with me in Spring 2015, he went back to hiking, climbing and skiing,
more about this at the end of this article. A year and a half later, he checked
in, writing, "I spent a month skiing last winter in Montana and another
month hiking and exploring in Colorado and Arizona last summer. I did everything
from ski knee deep powder to hiking a 14,000 ft mountain. I'm so happy I found
you and your information and never got surgery."

A
Short History of My Work To Develop These Methods(skip
this to go straight to fix pain)

This information is not copied from someone else who said it, or something
I heard in a gym or in exercise science school. I am the scientist who
researches what really happens. This is what I found through years of
work. I started lab research studies in the 1970s to find why standard
back pain and other pain exercises and treatments didn't work. I saw
that rehab info was not being applied to how people move and live. I
applied it. People got better. I saw that common treatments and even
the assumptions about why pain occurs, were not done by real researchers
but repeated from myths that people liked, and from bad studies. I did
painstaking studies and kept careful records. When I was working on
studies of the human body during immersion for combat swimmers, the
experimental subjects, the lab physicians, and others in the lab kept
saying they had all these aches and pains. Exercises their own physical
therapists and docs gave them did not work or made them worse. I fixed
them up (quickly - so I could get back to work). Their doctors started
calling me (calling the lab actually, as I don't have a phone) asking
how I fixed them so well. They (and their physicians) started taking
classes with me. In the 1980s, class participants asked me to write
everything down for them. I was surprised. I thought they should have
taken notes. I typed information sheets for them. More doctors came
to me after taking my classes, saying they knew their standard Patient
Handouts were ineffective exercises. They asked me to make handouts
for their patients. I was surprised. Again. I thought they could do
that themselves. I typed Patient Handout sheets for them. I
kept collecting data like a good scientist, doing studies to test and
retest methods, and develop better ones. When the internet came out,
I sent handouts electronically, instead of photocopies. In the 1990s
I typed everything in several training manuals that became books. One
is Health & Fitness In Plain English - How To Be Happy, Healthy
and Fit for the Rest of your Life. After two different publishers, the
new THIRD edition of How To Be Happy, Healthy and Fit... eliminates
wrong things previous publishers added over my objections. Another book
is Fix Your Own Pain, with patient stories in every chapter
showing why patients get better, or don't, and why. For each, I tested
new conditions, and rechecked new data, to make sure the work proved
tests of time. Several more books of my life's work tell how to make
life pain free, stronger, and more fun. Each book is different. I have
seen fitness and rehab myths and fads come and go, but these methods
remain effective over time. More about me in Adventures.
Limited Classes and appointments
to train directly with me, and workshop certification
by me through AFEM for top students. Get the books
for reference while you keep getting better:

To
keep this quick and easy, much is shortened.
Use this summary to get better now, and get the books
and eBooks for the rest:

Studies
and news reports state that back pain is mysterious and difficult to remedy,
but back pain does
not have to be difficult to fix or prevent.

The
answer is simple. People do an astonishing number of things every day to
do ordinary activities with injurious movement habits. They bend wrong hundreds
of times every day. They do exercise with the same poor body mechanics.
They stand, bend, sit, and lift wrong every day, hold muscles tightly while
they move around, then do bad exercises that add to the strain. People wonder
why they still get pain even though they "do their exercises."
They do "back exercises," but do not know that strong muscles
will not automatically give you healthy
posture, make you bend and lift properly, or make up for all the things
you do the rest of the day to injure your back. Back pain treatments are
done by the hundreds of thousands daily: physical therapy, surgery, exercise,
massage, pain management, chiropractic, acupuncture. Pain may reduce at
the time, as almost any movement makes you feel briefly better, or the treatments
are done lying down in positions where most people would feel better anyway.
Pain returns if you have not stopped the cause. Many wind up in back
surgery, or long term or recurring pain, not understanding why their physical
therapy or exercise program, or pills, or yoga "didn't work."
They call it "stress." Instead, it is simple to retrain unhealthful
movement and habits. Stop the cause of the injury and the pain will stop.

Instead
of doing a bunch of artificial rehab exercises, and using stiff, uncomfortable
posture drills, then going back to damaging daily life movement, I have
developed functional health and exercise movement mechanics for living and
moving in healthy ways.

Follow-up
from Pravir Patel:
"Hello Dr Jolie, Hope this email finds you in best of your health,
It has been a long time since I have written to you. I have been doing really
good with my back by doing just the basic things that you had suggested
and advised. So am really thankful for that."

You
know you shouldn't bend wrong, But you do  all day, every day 
picking up socks, petting the dog, for laundry, trash, making the bed, looking
in the refrigerator, and all the dozens of times you bend over things. Then
you go to the gym and lift weights bent over, stretch by touching your toes,
do yoga with repeated forward bends, then lift and carry bags like that.
No wonder your back eventually accrues damage and injury.

Years of bent forward sitting and standing, and bad lifting and stretching
where you stand or sit and lean forward, are enough to injure your back
over time as badly as a single accident.

After years of pushing discs outward with unhealthy bending and forward
rounding, the discs can eventually break down (degenerate) and push outward
(herniate). The resulting herniation can press on nearby nerves, sending
sciatic pain down your leg. If you squash and push the discs in your neck
with a forward head posture - letting your head drop forward, and/or constantly
holding your chin forward and up, the disc(s) in your neck may herniate
and press on nerves, sending pain down your arm. Shoulder stands and yoga
plows are becoming more known as common sources of herniation and bone
spur.

Chronic forward bending (flexion) sheers and pushes vertebral discs outward,
and overstretches the muscles and long ligament down the back, allowing
more room for discs to protrude centrally instead of more to the side.

Tight muscles from years of poor positioning and short resting muscle
length can also press on the same nerves mimicking sciatica.

A
degenerating disc is not a disease, but a simple, mechanical injury that
can quickly heal, if you stop grinding it and physically pushing
it out of place with unhealthy habits.

This
is a side view of your spine. Left - normal disc between two vertebrae.
Right - disc pushed out (herniated) from bad bending habits. Chronic forward
bending from bad sitting and bad bending over sheers the discs and gradually
pushes them outward.

Sitting with lower back rounded (and constant bad bending)
can eventually hurt the soft tissue and push lower back discs outward (herniate
or bulge)

Using
good bending and healthier sitting instead
of band bending and sitting (not in addition to bad bending)
is key to stop the major cause of disc and lower spine damage

Instead
of damaging yourself all day, many times a day, stop the damage, and the
pain stops with it. Then your injuries can heal. Good bending also gives
you built in strength and stretch that further helps fix pain and gives
better overall health built in to your ordinary day, without exercises needed.
Done right good bending will not hurt your knees and can be used to strengthen
and prevent knee pain as well. Other things to do also follow below in this
article. More specifics about discs are in the Fixing
Discs article.

If your
pain is mostly when standing and goes away with sitting, then you may be
standing with swayback and can fix that easily with information in the article
to Fix Back Pain Felt When Standing. It is still healthy and important
to fix bad bending and sitting habits, as above, also.

Strengthening
or "Doing Exercises" is Not The Key

Back
pain has a large component of bad movement mechanics, not weak muscles.
Strength does not make you bend or move in healthy ways.

Many
people do strengthening exercises and become stronger people who still bend
wrong, move wrong, and slouch. "Core" exercises are especially
misunderstood and repeated and prescribed without any understanding that
stronger abdominal muscles have little to do with the most common causes
of back pain. Moreover, most conventional core training exercises are done
in bent forward ways that reinforce the same bad mechanics you started with.
For the research and interesting story on what abdominal muscles really
have to do with back pain, see my article on Abdominal
Muscles - what they do may surprise you. Bending, standing, moving,
and living your life with healthy movement mechanics is up to you.
The rest of this article tells more on how.

Where
strengthening helps - Someone may use good body mechanics all day, yet ache
with fatigue at the end of the day. That is not a back injury or true back
pain that needs treatments, and should not be addressed with medications.
Another instance is someone who really is so weak that they can't hold up
their own body weight and instead, shifts it onto their joints, which wear
with time and grind under the weight (slouching).

A little
strengthening allows you to do more before fatigue pain sets in, and to
be more able to use good mechanics instead of slouching. Strengthening will
not keep you from slouching, and don't fall prey to unhealthful exercise
programs claiming to cure back pain. Almost any movement can make you feel
better for the moment. Over the long run, it's better not to use injurious
movement techniques for your health. Use good mechanics for all you do and
healthier ways to exercise explained in this article, other free articles
on this site and the books with more.

From
a Reader

"Dear
Dr Jolie, Your approach is great! Bought two of your books and the
more I read and understand, the more I wonder why your common sense
approach was not discovered before. Why exercise and at the same time
make no change in our poor daily habits? That does not work at all.
God bless you !" - Marie vB.

Discs
Can Heal

Disc
injury is not a life sentence. Disc degeneration or slippage (herniation)
can heal - if you let it, no differently than a sprained ankle. Stop damaging
your discs with bad bending, standing, and sitting habits and the discs
can heal. It takes years to herniate a disc, and only days or weeks to heal
it by stopping bad habits. Several things contribute to disc pain. Read
the rest of this article, try everything that makes sense to you and doesn't
hurt, then go to the free article on Fixing Your
Own Discs and Sciatica.

No
Tightening

Certain
pop fitness and PT exercises say to tighten or brace or draw in abdominal
muscles, squeeze together shoulder blades or gluteal or other muscles. It
is not a useful or healthy or effective practice. Tighten your neck! Sound
comfortable? Tighten your legs and walk around or go running! Sound sensible?
When you bend your arm to scratch your nose, you don't tighten your arm
muscles to do it. In fact, you shouldn't want to. You merely move your arm
bones using your arm muscles. Healthy movement is the same. No squeezing
should be needed. Strengthening and movement does not need tightening. Much
of the tightening or squeezing (or whatever other word you use for this
unfortunate habit) is often a cause of pain and bad movement habits.

When
you chronically over-tighten muscles with hunching forward, overarching
backward, and bad habits and beliefs about tightening, they can remain too
shortened to let you stand properly. Or they stay tightened in knots
or spasm. This changes their muscle chemistry. Stop using bad movement mechanics
and your causes of pain can stop. More about spasm, below.

2. Functional
Movement to Retrain Your Muscles and Stop Causes of Back Pain

Back
pain exercises are misunderstood. Are you injuring your their back all day
then hope to fix it with a few exercises? This does not work. When
you stop bending wrong many times each day, which injures your back many
times each day, it will stop hurting and can heal.

If you
lie on the floor to do exercises, then stand up and walk away with no use
of the positioning or strength you just practiced, it is like eating butter
and sugar all day, then doing 10 minutes of exercises and wondering why
it doesn't "work." The key is what you do all day.

Try
the following slowly. See how you feel the next day, then increase. Use
these moves, not as exercises to do 10 times,
but to retrain how to bend and move all day. Stop
hurting your back with bad bending and your back will stop hurting. Start
strengthening your body and legs with good bending and you will get free
exercise all day:

Good
Bending Using the Squat

The
squat is for all the times during the day you need to bend
and reach things:

You
know not to bend over to pick things up, but you do it. Every day. Hundreds
of times a day.

Instead,
when you crouch for things, keep your body mostly upright. You already know
that. But do you do it? Are you avoiding it because your legs are too weak,
or it hurts your knees? Done right, it will
prevent both back pain and knee pain. The key is knee positioning
to keep body weight on the muscles of the thigh and hip, not on the knee
joint. Press more from your heel not the front of the foot. Practice bending
knees without bringing them forward. Keep knees over the foot. It takes
a little more muscles use to bend right, but good bending will give you
the increased strength you need, built-in to every time you bend and crouch.
See the separate KNEE PAIN article
for more about knees.

Use a
healthy squat (right) for all the many times a day you bend. Keep heels
down. Bring knees back, not forward.
Good bending (right) does not hurt knees, strengthens in healthful ways,
and prevents bad mechanics that are a common source of back pain.

Stand
comfortably with feet side by side. Feet are any width apart, because this
is real life. You need to bend in many different sizes and kinds of places
and situations.

Your upper body stays
mostly upright, not tilting far forward.

Keep
both heels down on the floor. Don't lift your heels. Keep weight back over
the entire foot, rather than forward to the ball of the foot or toes.

Both
knees stay back toward your ankles, not sliding forward. Good bending saves
your back, strengthens knees, and prevents knee pain at the same time.

Do
not keep a large inward curve to the lower back. That was a fad in past
years. It was never healthy or good biomechanics. It was an exaggerated
curve and caused many problems of its own. More about neutral spine and
why this overarching is another major contributor to another kind of back
pain is summarized below, and in full in the article "Back
Pain With Long Standing and Running - What Abs Do, You May Be Surprised"

Good
bending gives good lengthening of the lower spine. Good bending with a
healthy squat is a superior lower back stretch compared to bending over
forward to touch toes. More on that follows.

How
To Use Squats To Fix Your Back

Is
it not an exercise that you do 10 times a day. It does not fix anything
if you do it as an exercise.

You
use it as healthy bending instead of bad bending for all the hundreds
of times in every daythat you crouch and bend
and reach down for things. Then
you do not move in a way that injures and hurts. The squat is completely
misused when it is given as an exercise to do 10 times a day to strengthen,
then return to bad bending after.

Using
good bending throughout the day gives a healthy "moving stretch."
It is highly effective as a stretch and movement re-trainer. It is better
than rigidly holdIng static stretches, or doing slow squats as reps of rehab
or gym exercises. Real bending using a healthy squat for the things you
need to do every day makes effective warm-ups and can loosen tight hip areas,
all built-in to your real life.

"Fitness"
people love to debate how deep to squat, and exactly what joint angle to
hold your body, and ignore real life - dozens, even hundreds of "good
bends" needed of various heights and foot placements to reach and retrieve
things every day.

Stop
hurting your spine and muscles with bad bending and your back will stop
hurting. Start strengthening your body and legs with good bending and you
will get free exercise all day.

Good
Bending Using theLunge

The
lunge retrains bending habits and gives you free leg and back exercise and
stretch at the same time. Done right, you
can use it to learn how to prevent both back pain and knee pain.
Use the lunge for daily bending:

Another way to bend well (left) for all the many dozens of times you bend
every day is the lunge.
Keep front knee over ankle (left) not forward (right).

Stand
comfortably with one foot in front, the other comfortably back, any width
apart that you want to practice with. Keep the back foot facing straight
forward, not turned out.

Tuck
your pelvis and hip under to reduce your lower back inward curve to a
smaller curve. More neutral spine with smaller curve will stretch the
front of the hip IN THE REAR LEG. If you do not feel the front of the
hip in the rear leg getting nice stretch then you are doing it wrong.
More about neutral spine follows below. A lot more information about it
a is on the "Fixing Swayback"
page.

Bend
both knees to dip towards the floor as far as comfortable, without touching
the floor. At least dip down a few inches.

Don't
let your front knee slide forward. Keep your front knee over the ankle.
This is an important part of using the lunge to save your back - you shouldn't
hurt your knee. Done properly, the lunge strengthens and protects your
knees too.

How
To Use Lunges To Fix Your Back

Is
it not an exercise that you do 10 times a day. It does not fix anything
if you do it as an exercise. You use it for all the hundreds of times you
bend and reach down in a day instead of bad bending. Real
lunges (healthy crouching) to pick things up around the house and workplace
becomes a highly effective"moving stretch" and movement re-trainer,
better than stiff slow lunges as gym or PT exercises.

Stop
hurting your back with bad bending and your back will stop hurting. Start
strengthening your body and legs with good bending and you will get free
exercise all day.

Unless
you are moving in healthy ways for your real life, it is not a lifestyle
and it is not healthy. Healthy bending, sitting, reaching, sitting, standing,
and moving is easy and life changing. It is free exercise and injury prevention.
When should you do it? Each time you want your daily life to be healthy.

"Dear
Dr Bookspan, Please add my name to the list of happy people with happy
backs! I've been doing stretches and bends as you have instructed and
my lower back and hips are delighted!! I know how much stronger and what
better form I have when I go to work on my own clients and am not hurting
during or after. Many thanks, Marianne"

3.
Why Yoga Forward Bends Are Like Lifting Packages Wrong

Most
people know that rounding your back a lot is unhealthy. Armed with that,
they leap to the idea that the opposite will automatically prevent all problems.
It doesn't. Bending forward with a straight back adds to load directly on
the lower spine.

Straightening
an overly rounded spine does good things - when you are sitting or standing
upright. However, when you bend forward, either rounded or straight - both
increase injurious leverage on the lower spine. Leaning forward with a straight
back increases the force up until reaching maximum at a horizontal position
- the hip hinge position. As a separate problem, the common practice of
"rolling up one vertebra at a time" causes the separate problems of
unequal pressure on discs.

There
are no hip hinges that are good for discs.
Please mentally adjust the hip hinge drawing (second from left) to include
the several variations of hip hinges. Use the CONCEPTS, please, and use healthier
ways of moving and bending.

Here
it is again, with simple physical principles to explain more, for those who
want it

Thank you Extensionyoga.com for the instructive
yoga figures in black.

What
to Do? Healthy Bending with Upright Torso

Use
good bending with the half squat, shown above, instead of bad bent-forward
bending, which is one of the major contributors to lower back pain. The
upper body stays fairly upright, and the upper spine does not round or hunch.
There is no exaggerated inward curve to the lower spine, which was a fad
in fitness gyms for a decade or so. More about all the back pain that fad
caused is in the Hyperlordosis and Abs article.
Good bending, as shown above, gives a daily, natural, built-in stretch to
the Achilles tendons, calf, hips, and lower spine.

Diane
Wendling wrote:

"Thank
you Dr. Bookspan. I hurt for 30 years and now I don't.
I can't believe in all my years, no other doctor has ever mentioned this
type of treatment. Thank you so much!"

There
is no need to bend over forward to stretch the hamstrings. There are better,
more functional ways to stretch them, shown in #5 below and also on my Stretching
Smarter page with more in my Stretching Smarter
book. "Functional" means that you stretch them in the way
you need for real life hamstring range of movement, not by bending over.

I put more
about understanding and using yoga moves for health on the syllabus page
for my yoga classes. Many moves are traditional, but unhealthful. Click
the Yoga Syllabus here or from my
Class page. Remember - yoga, not dogma.

If you
have lower back pain during or after walking, running, backpacking, and
feel you need to lean or bend over forward or lift one leg to stop the pain,
this kind of pain is usually from allowing too much inward curve in the
lower back. Summary follows below. Read the full article here
to understand why and know how to spot and fix this common hidden source
of ongoing back pain that seems to come with standing and relieved with
sitting or lying down or bending over.

Standing
with too much inward curve of your lower back is called swayback and hyperlordosis.
"Hyper" means too much and "lordosis"
is the lumbar inward curve. Sometimes people say "lordosis" to
mean too much curve too. Then confusion comes when people use the two different
words to mean the same thing. I will use "hyperlordosis"
or swayback to distinguish. Hyperlordosis (overarching) is a major
cause of "mystery" back pain and injury.

Hyperlordosis
is not a structural problem. It is a slouch; a bad posture. You create hyperlordotic
posture in two main ways.

A common
way people increase the lumbar arch to hyperlordosis is to lean the upper
body backward when standing, reaching overhead, and lifting things. A second
way is to tilt the pelvis forward. Some people do both at once. Both drawings
below show standing in hyperlordosis (swayback posture):

Drawings above show two of several ways of overarching the lower back
(hyperlordosis, also called swayback). Left - tilting pelvis and
leaning upper body backward. Right - level pelvis but pushed forward and
leaning the upper body backward .

Swayback
compresses the lower spine. Pain is usually noticed after standing, walking,
or running.Stop pain with neutral spine, explained in the Fix
Hyperlordosis article. No strengthening exercise will do it for you.
It is a voluntary, deliberate change in how you stand and move.

Hyperlordosis, also called swayback, is an increased inward lower back
curve (arch). Also calledswayback or too much lumbar arch
or too much lumbar inward curve.

Swayback compresses the joints of your spine, called facets, and surrounding
soft tissue. The weight of your upper body slouching onto your lower spine
creating a feeling of ache, pinch, and or pressure. The ache goes away
immediately in many cases when you reduce the large curve - as often occurs
when sitting or lifting a leg or lying with knees bent. These are not
cures and are often mistaken for things to do, instead of obvious diagnostic
markers.

Another
hidden way that overarching (swayback/ hyperlordosis) hurts is when an
existing bulging disc becomes squeezed by the spine bones as they angle
toward each other in bad positioning.

Hyperlordosis is not a medical or structural condition. Hyperlordosis
is a posture you can control by using torso muscles to move your spine
away from the arched position into a straighter healthier position, described
below and in the free Fix
Hyperlordosis
(abs) article.

Hyperlordosis
of Pregnancy is the same preventable bad posture. It
is leaning backward to offset a load in front. Leaning backward from the
lower back makes a sharper inward curve, pinching and compressing the
lower spine, making the area ache after long standing.

Neutral
spine is a voluntary, deliberate change in how you stand and move. No
strengthening exercise or posture drills or core training will do it for
you. Fix it with
the neutral spine positioning shown in summary below and in detail in
the Fix Hyperlordosis article.

How
To Stop Back Pain From Hyperlordosis (also called Swayback and Lordotic Arching)

If you
get lower back/ hip/ flank pain during and after long standing, running
and overhead lifting, a common cause is standing with the lower back overly
folded and tilted back so that it pinches and compresses the joints and
soft tissue. People who stand with this poor position usually feel they
must bend forward or sit to relieve the ache. Stretching, ab exercises,
and all kinds of crazy gimmicks became confused as cures, instead of not
standing wrong in the first place.

The
left (first) drawing above shows neutral. The second shows tilting the
pelvis forward (the backside tilts outward in back). The third shows a
level pelvis, but hyperlordosis from leaning the upper body backward.
I spent many years identifying these (hopefully now obvious) painful positions.

To feel
how to change to a more neutral spine position:

1. Stand
with your heels, backside, upper back against a wall. Notice how much curve
is in your lower spine and how far that inward lumbar curve is away from
the wall.

2.
Press the lower back area closer toward wall. The large space between your
back and the wall becomes a smaller space. Do not flatten against the wall.
Belt line is horizontal from front to back. Back pain from overarching should
stop right then, if you do this right. Make sure you can relax and breathe
and feel that this is a motion of your spine, without any tightening of
your abdominal muscles or your gluteal muscles.

3.
When you walk away from the wall, use this new neutral spine position all
the time as a relaxed healthy position.

Remember

Use
your own muscles to reposition your spine, no matter what else you are doing.

Dont
lean your upper body back when carrying things in front of you (anterior
loads) like a chair, grocery bags, a pet, or baby.

Read
the abdominal article for more of this method,
and the book The Ab Revolution teaches specifically
several ways to learn how to reposition your torso, hip, and lower spine,
and how to use the repositioning for all you do (use neutral spine instead
of standing overly arched). Crunches and ab exercises do not do that. How
you stand and move all day is what determines if you are putting your lower
back into a position that folds it so that your lower back hurts.

Aren't
You Supposed To Overarch The Spine, Tilt The Pelvis, and Stick Out Your Backside?

A small
inward curve belongs in the lower back. Unfortunately, people hear that,
and overdo. Overarching is not the normal curve to the lower back, it is
not neutral spine, and it is not the way to protect your back when lifting
or exercising. An injurious phenomenon in fitness and "health"
magazines is to stand and exercise with the hip and behind tilted out in
back, and the lower back overly arched. It is not attractive because it
is not healthy. It is sloppy posture, unhealthy for the lower spine, and
shows a lack of understanding of how to use core muscles to hold neutral
spine.

Overly-arched
posture is promoted by popular fitness personalities, and popular exercises,
where it is mistaken for, even advertised for, fitness and trimness. Trainers
often tell clients to stick their behind out when squatting or lunging,
however this is too much arch. The hyperextension is damaging to the low
spine joints and soft tissue. It also does not use core muscles effectively.

What
Do Abs Have To Do With This?

Abs
work like any other muscles - they bend the joints they cross. For example.
biceps bend your elbow forward (or keep it from straightening). Abs cross
your vertebrae. They bend your spine forward or keep it from swaying backward,
but only if you voluntarily use them. Using abdominal muscles does not mean
to tighten them. TIght muscles can't do their job. You wouldn't want to
tighten your leg muscles and try to run. Or tighten your throat and try
to sing. You use abdominal muscles to move your spine. That's all. You need
to deliberately use your abs while standing to hold you from backward arching,
particularly when reaching overhead and carrying loads.

Using
Abs (or any muscles) Does Not Mean Tightening Them

Using
your abs doesn't mean sucking them in or making them "tight.
You can't breathe or move properly with tightened muscles. Tightening does
not change your posture or reduce the pain-producing arch.

How
Do Abs Help Your Back?

Using
your abs means voluntarily moving your spine
away from overly-arched position, and into neutral spine
when standing. It is not a matter of having strong abs. A slightly-built
person can stand with neutral spine, and muscular people can have overly-arched
spine posture. It is a matter of using abdominal muscles to prevent the
overarching that causes pain. The Ab
Revolution teaches this concept and shows how to use it during
all daily life and exercise movement.

Doesnt
Doing Crunches Help That?

It is
not strength that makes you stand correctly. It's how you hold your own
posture. Many muscular people stand with terrible posture and have back
pain.

Crunches
don't work your abs the way you need for real life.

Crunches
don't train you how to use your abdominal muscles and core the rest of the
day to control your spine position. They don't do it automatically.

Crunches
reinforce rounded flexed posture, even when done properly.

Crunches
make a person, who likely spends much of their day already hunched over
a work area, practice that hunched posture which may be mechanically promoting
the back and neck pain they think they are working their abs to prevent.

Most people do their crunches then stand up arched with no knowledge that
back support comes from voluntary posture, not automatic strengthening.

What
About Pelvic Tilts?

A common
ineffective exercise often given for back pain is to lie on the floor or
stand, and tilt (tuck) the hip and pelvis 10 times (or any number of "reps").
The claim is that these minor motions strengthen the area, with the further
untrue claim that strengthening will stop the pain. Any exercise from pelvic
tilts is miniscule, and pain is not from weakness. Often, the person finishes
their pelvic tilts, then stands and returns to the same swayback (slouch)
that causes the pain. Pain returns. It is no mystery.

The
purpose of the pelvic tilt "exercise" is to practice how to
move your spine and pelvis out of the overly arched position that causes
pain, into healthy neutral spine (tucked just enough to be neutral). Then
you must *use* that neutral position (that you just practiced) for all
your standing movement.No tightening or strengthening is involved.

Tilts
do not strengthen. The movement is too minor and low resistance.

Even if tilts strengthened, back "support" is not automatic.
Strengthening any muscles will not a bad
posture which causes pain.

Stronger
muscles do not automatically move any body part anywhere. You have to
move yourself into desired posture.

The
use of pelvic tilts is to retrain how to reduce your lower back position.
Then use that knowledge to move your pelvis/
lower back into neutral position when standing.

-----

A
patient insisted to me that her pelvic tilts "worked" and fixed
her pain because they strengthened her core. When I asked her when she
felt the pain go away, she said when she was lying on her back doing them.
Of course lying down with your knees bent and taking a painful arch out
out of your lower spine makes you feel better - for the moment. I asked
her if the pain came back eventually, she said, "Of course, when
I walk too much." So the pelvic tilts did not really fix anything.
Strength was not the issue. Standing and walking in poor overarched lumbar
posture was the problem. Once you learn your pelvic tilt, don't do it
10 times, you only need it once - to move to neutral position. Then use
neutral - while standing, while walking, while running. (No tightening
- any more than you tighten your arm to scratch your nose or tighten your
legs to go running.) In other words, pelvic tilts don't work from
doing them 10 times as an exercise. Do one pelvic tilt standing up, and
use that new neutral position for real life, not as a set of exercises

-----

5.
The Point of Back Exercises

Strengthening and
stretchingare important, but do
not change posture or lifting habits, and so, do not cure
back pain or posture problems. Often the pain was not from needing more
strength or flexibility anyway. Use this new Dr. Jolie Bookspan method
of using your brain and voluntary healthy
movement habits to stop the source of pain. I have redesigned
back exercises to be used to retrain you how you hold your body all the
time.

Doing back exercise
is not like getting a shot of penicillin or going to confession. It does
not fix bad habits the rest of the time. For example, lying
down for pelvic tilts, then standing up and letting your back flop into
any old bad posture, not keeping the proper tilt.Back exercise is supposed to
retrain your thinking and habits *all the time* not merely something to
"do 10 times." Strengthening has no
effect on posture if you dont apply the strength the rest of the
day to control joint angles for all activities.

Abdominal
Muscle Exercises

Use the introductory exercises, explained in the full ab
article to retrain lower spine positioning during how you walk and
go about your day. If you only use abdominal
exercises as reps and sets of an"exercise," that is missing
the point.

Tight hamstrings are
commonly thought to contribute to back pain. Even though that is not so,
the irony is that many hamstring stretches are done in ways that bend
forward, putting degenerative forces on the discs. Leaning over at the
waist, both standing and sitting, for toe-touches does stretch your back
and hamstrings, and may feel good, but is
not good for discs. This is true even for yoga stretches
where you bend over forward sitting or standing touch toes. Most people
know not to bend over like that to pick things up or sit like that at
your desk. It doesn't magically become good for you by calling it a stretch.

Here is different
and functional way to stretch hamstrings. It is done standing, lifting
your leg in the air. It is functional because that is how you need to
kick, step up high, and do many real things:

Stand upright.

Notice
both your feet. Make sure your feet are both facing straight forward,
not turned out, even a small amount.

Lift
one leg, knee straight.

Make
sure the foot you are standing on is still facing straight forward, not
turned out, even a small amount. If it is turned, then either hop to straighten
it, or put your other foot down, adjust, and figure how to lift one leg
without twisting the other foot. This will be healthy training for walking,
running and other movement.

Lift
to any height that gives stretch in the hamstring itself.

Notice now tempting it is to use bad habits of bending forward, rounding
your back, and other slouches that reduce the real stretch - on the hamstrings.
Remember, stand upright so that you get the stretch for the hamstrings.

Notice that standing without holding on or propping up your foot helps
you practice balance.

Hold
your leg up with your hands if that helps you get more height until you
strengthen enough. Make sure you don't round your shoulders or learn forward
to reach your leg. Learning and practicing to stand straight is one of
the purposes and benefits of doing this hamstring stretch in a functional
way.

Notice that you use standing on one leg and lifting the other to various
heights in real life, from kicking and dancing, to stepping up heights,
and others.

Many people hurt from
excessive forward bending. Then add many exercises with more forward bending
- toe touches, knee to chest, most Pilates exercises, and crunches. Often
these exercises are incorrectly prescribed for back and neck pain. They
contribute to the original problem of over rounding and bad posture. Stop
crunches. Use my ab techniques to get good exercise without needing the
kind of flexion that is hard on discs. See my page on Abdominal
muscles. More about Discs on the page for Fixing
Discs and Sciatica. Here is my
summary on bad exercises.Click the class
page for my ab classes, back classes, and yoga classes that teach
healthful movement.

6.
Back Spasm

I
am working on a section on spasm in the back muscles to put here. Until
I can do more, here is an overview:

Unhealthy body movements
or ongoing bad movement habits that ordinarily would only strain or pull
a muscle or make it ache, sometimes result in spasm - painful muscle contraction
that will not let go on its own. Spasm can also result if you routinely
hold muscles tightly, or hold a rigid posture.

Exact muscle chemistry
change that allow back spasm in healthy people is not known - by anyone.
According to the Association of Ringside Physicians, there are reports
that certain dietary supplements such as creatine might increase risk
of muscle cramps. Increasingly, people take large doses of various supplements.
It is known that spasm and muscle cramps are not caused by lack of bananas
- As my friend, sports medicine doc Tony Islas says: "It's not Hypo-Banana-emia."

The chemistry of causes
of spasm is not my direct expertise. My work has been experiments with
spasm already in progress and direct manual lengthening to relieve spasm:

Direct Release.
Back spasm can often be quickly relieved with specific brief
stretches that directly lengthen specific muscle(s) in line with how they
are shortened in spasm. Unfortunately spasm is often treated with long
unnecessary courses of drugs, repeated 'adjustments' or other treatments,
and fad food myths. The spasm may return between treatments, from the
same bad habit(s) that caused it in the first place. Or a stretch that
should be used only on the rare occasions needed to take out a lumbar
spasm is mistaken for something to do daily - like forward bending stretches,
which when done all the time cause their own kind of back pain (explained
above and in the Disc Pain article). Yoga
Triangles and
twists are more examples. When used for a brief stretch - meaning two
to three seconds at most - and not forced too far, can give a nice
range of motion, give a brief healthy spongy movement to vertebral discs.
If a spasm is down a specific side area, then a brief 2-4 second Triangle
(simple side bend, no yoga classes needed) or specific direct gentle twist
if specifically lengthening a spasm shortened in line with the twist,
could release it - used as a one or two-time application. Random lists
of yoga stretches may or may not lengthen the area needed. When triangle
and twist poses are regularly done and maintained static for the long
periods of time held in many classes, they put sheer force on the discs
(a large component to herniation) and restrict circulation. Regular long
side bends, forward bending, twists, and triangles are not needed or healthy.
Standing with too much inward curve in the lower back, for example, keeps
lumbar muscles in a shortened length, not their needed resting or functioning
length. They may become too tight and stiff to be comfortable. A forward
bend often feels good when it lengthens a shortened area, such as a lumbar
spine chronically shortened from standing in a bad posture of swayback
(hyperlordosis). Forward bends become erroneously accepted as a cure,
when not standing with swayback (the too large inward curve) would be
the actual cure, and the forward bends a poor and unhealthy antidote.
For an acute spasm, a lengthening bend can release it, if done right.
If you continually go back to bad habits that make pain return, and claim
you have to do yoga or other stretches every day to fix it, then your
yoga or treatments are not fixing the causes. It may even be one of the
causes. See the Yoga Page for more.

For more on why hamstring
flexibility is not related to back pain, or required to relieve it, see
the Hamstring page. A lower back stretch
that is functional and feels great, and also can lengthen a shortened
tightened lower back is ordinary good bending using the squat, explained
above in sections 2 and 3. A full squat with both heels down on the floor,
done right, can be a good and healthy lower back stretch. Student and
regular success story contributor Robert Davis, demonstrates full squat
with both heels flat on the floor, body fairly upright, in the photo above
right. He also made us a video demonstrating using a simple half and full
squat for picking up things around the house - to view Cardiovascular
Cleanup, click the Functional Fitness
as a Lifestyle page.

Drugs.
Several specific agents can let a contracted muscle release, such as a
few drinks, a hot bath (not at the same time as the drinks) or a one-day
course (two at most) of a relaxing agent. Muscle
relaxers are not ever intended for long or extended use.
Muscle relaxers can create dependence, withdrawal, and rebound, causing
a cascade of increasing problems. Muscle relaxers are even prescribed
when spasm is not present, making unnecessary medication that can harm,
instead of identifying and stopping the cause of the pain. Many of these
drugs are not limited to muscle but general system depressant. A terrible
miscalculation occurs when people who are put on various kinds of muscle
relaxers and related drugs that depress body systems get reduced bowel
and other functions due to sluggishness directly related to the drugs.
Some surgeons use the serious sign of "reduced bowel or bladder"
for people who had an otherwise not dangerous disc herniation, and put
them into back surgery.

Foam rollers,
tennis balls, and assorted overpriced devices are over-sold as
cures. Sometimes people manage to randomly press the right place with
them which accidentally lengthens, but what is needed is direct lengthening
of the specific fibers shortened from spasm. The devices mostly serve
to make money for the seller. For general use, they may not do anything
physiological or for health. If you like them just to feel good in general,
you don't need any invented sham reason to enjoy using them. Don't pay
for hyped products. Make your own.

Surgery Tragedy.
Spasm can hurt terribly and limit ability to function. When people who
could have benefited quickly from direct stretch or brief limited relaxing
agents go for medical scans, sometimes a disc or other injury shows on
scans that may not be the entire, or any, source of the pain. Surgery
is often unnecessarily performed. The person wakes (on narcotics) thanking
the doctor when the pain seems gone (for the moment) because the spasm,
the main cause of the pain, was relaxed by the anesthetic. They may have
increasing problems from the unnecessary surgery as time passes. Often,
the anesthetic was what relieved the spasm, not the surgery. A tragic,
painful, and expensive error.

Food cures.
No one, no scientist, knows actual cause and chemistry why muscles sometimes
tighten so much and do not want to let go. Lack of knowledge brings huge
marketing offenses of sham cures of various pills and foods. It seems
known that cause is not for lack of bananas or most other foods. Sometimes
spasm goes away by itself, leaving whatever unrelated thing the person
did or ate that day to become the next crazy claim for cure.

Muscle "Balance"
So many false beliefs perpetuate using vague phrases like "muscle
imbalance" and that muscles "pulling" on your various parts
cause "knots. Muscles pulling on your parts is how you move - normally
and daily. Muscles on one side of the part have to pull harder than muscles
on the other, or you would not be able to move at all. More on this
in #7 below.

For upper back spasm
- under, between, and around the scapula (shoulder blades), one common
cause is the bad habit of leaning the upper body backwards when standing.
The same leaning back is sometimes associated with spasm in the front
muscles just below the breast. This is more common when the person who
leans the upper body backwards as a bad posture, rounds the upper body
forward to compensate, resulting in a habitually shortened area right
there that can go into spasm. My article on Neutral
Spine shows how to prevent the upper body lean back (I named it Thoracic
Lean) and stop this kind of upper body pain. A second cause of upper
back spasm is squeezing the shoulder blades together deliberately because
of bad advice about posture. Squeezing shoulder blades together as a habit
more often causes a pinching pain and tightened muscles. Fixing upper
body positioning is often more a matter of "unrounding" the
upper spine (straightening), not pulling the shoulders back (and definitely
not pinching shoulder blades together). See
the Neck and Upper Body Pain Fix Article
on how to restore healthy upper back muscle length and position so no
squeezing or pressing downward is necessary.

In
short, back spasm release can be like a simple leg cramp release- a simple brief
direct stretch in line with the specific shortened fibers. It can be tricky
when different muscles clench at once in different directions. Then you
must determine the direct lengthening that briefly gets them at once.
Check back - this section on back spasm is in progress.

7.
Myths of "Muscle Balance" and "Imbalance"

Much is repeated about
"muscle balance" (or imbalance) but what does that mean? The
often repeated myth is that one (or some) muscles pull more than others
(like a tug of war) creating bad posture, or pulling, or other effect,
however one muscle pulling more than another is how you move at all, how
you are able to carefully aim a pitch or make it faster or slower, and
control any large or fine movement.

Muscle
"imbalance" doesn't cause pain or herniated your discs. You
constantly change pulling to move as wanted. Slouching and unhealthy positioning
is rarely caused by muscles tighter on one area compared to another pulling
you into bad position. Obvious exceptions are Tetanus or Cerebral Palsy.
Even with dystonia or palsy, you need to control the muscles all the more.
A well person who is slouching due to gravity, or tight, or uncoordinated
isn't an imbalance of how hard muscles pull, but how you are able to control
the amount of pulling, which grows with practice and is "use or lose"
without exercise, like most other things.

Having "tighter"
muscles here and there isn't "imbalance," and sometimes tightness
doesn't cause anything bad, even helps hold you in position without "rattling"
too loosely. If you have to strain so much that it is painful to stand
up comfortably straight, then use the stretches and healthy movement skills
in my articles and books.

Don't get sucked in
by myths of fancy terms like "muscle imbalance" - you can control
how you stand sit and move.

There is more on this
topic in my books.

8.
X-Rays and Scans

Pain
When Your X-Ray is Normal. You may be in great pain from simple damaging
mechanics. Your X-rays and scans are normal. You may be told nothing is
wrong, or to give up favorite activities. Your pain persists from bad postural
habits. This is no mystery. Change the bad habits to change the pain.

Other
times, scans show some minor problem like arthritis, herniated
disc, or degenerating structures. Like car tires that are mid-life, but
perfectly good, some wear may show on exam  but this is unrelated
to performance or pain. Pain is falsely ascribed to the arthritis. Patients
feel doomed, and are often told to give up activities. Pain (even the
anomaly itself) may mostly result from poor mechanics. This is no mystery.
Change the bad habits to change the pain.

Sometimes,
scans show some major problem, and major surgery is performed
to correct it. When the original problem was from the bad positioning,
often pain persists or returns because you never corrected the mechanics
that caused it. The defect itself may return from uncorrected mechanics.
Surgery can be avoided. Fix the source of the problem and the results
of the problem can heal, usually without surgery.

9.
Not All Pain is Orthopedic - When Pain Is Not From What's On Your X-Ray
or Scan

Pain from Foot
Orthotics

An extremely common
scenario is someone who goes to the doctor with a little pain from the
usual poor lifting and movement mechanics. They are prescribed foot orthotics,
which a rigid molds mistakenly believed to "hold" the foot in
proper position. However, consider this - they are molded sitting or lying
down, not when the person is standing where they need it and when foot
position changes. OR the orthotic is "custom shaped to the person's
foot" which was in the wrong position to begin with. Often the orthotics
are rigid and hard, which would cause pain in any case. The person get
new pain in the leg, hip, which can increase to numbness, then they are
told to further reduce activity and pay for PT or give up and live with
pain.

Pain
From Your Medicines

Common prescription
and non-prescription medicines cause much back pain. The pain is not a
rare effect as previously thought.

Are you on medicines
for lowering cholesterol? Sleeping medicines? For stomach acid? Drugs
for depression and anxiety? Irritable bowel drugs, stomach acid drugs
(a large contributor to osteoporosis and thinning bones, too) drugs to
concentrate, to help wake up, to calm you, for allergies. Increasingly,
drugs are found to make more pain as side effect, even drugs you are taking
for pain. Trying to stop them causes rebound and withdrawal pain - good
for drug companies to keep you on them, but bad for you and your health.
More about this is on the Nutrition page.

Stretches and exercises
do not fix this kind of pain. In a worsening cycle, side effects
are "treated" with yet more drugs with effects that lessen and
degrade your health. That is not "side effects" and that is
not health care. Many of these drugs are not needed. Some, like stomach
acid drugs, are associated with rebound, and increased symptoms.

A top health priority
is to stop the need for
these drugs so that you can lessen, then stop the need to take them. If
you are in pain, so don't exercise, then get cholesterol and other health
problems from not moving, can't sleep, then take cholesterol and sleeping
medicines that cause dependence and more pain, use the healthy principles
in my free summary articles and all my books so that you can move again,
and be healthfully tired at the end of the day and sleep well at night.
Not exercise is good medicine. Healthy exercise as healthy medicine will
stop the pain and need for medicines that cause more problems.

When you reach for
anti-inflammatory medicines and pills (even foods) remember that most
back pain from bad habits is not inflammatory in nature, and may be why
all those pills aren't working. Change the bad habits that are the cause.

Pain
From Junk Food?

There
are foods that promote inflammation - dairy, meat, refined sugar, white
flour. Even
though most back pain is not inflammatory in nature, for those who load
on inflammatory foods, and are sensitive to them, it might contribute.
Eat
anti-inflammatory foods - leafy green vegetables, flaxseed, cherries,
grape skins, blueberries, spices like ginger and turmeric - not in addition
to the same junk, but instead of the junk, for better overall health.

Unhealthful fad diets
are increasingly recognized for joint and muscle pain effects, specifically
Atkins and other low carbohydrate diets that restrict fruit rather than
junk sugar. Low carbohydrate diets reduce water in your muscles - water
weight loss - making muscles susceptible to pain, weakness, cramping,
and other health troubles. People will stick to these diets no matter
how unhealthy; they'd rather lose weight through a fad diet than through
healthier ways .

Much is known about
why back surgery is usually not needed. Until I can collect and put
all those articles here on this page, below are some links.

My Fitness
Fixer (tm) column ran on Healthline.com for 4 years. I
wrote over 800 articles on making medicine and exercise healthier, and
about distinguishing facts from wishful thinking. Several of my Fitness
Fixer articles documented studies that showed that, as a whole,
back surgery does not improve outcomes more than not having surgery,
plus the pain and bills for the surgery. When the column ended in 2010,
the company removed most of my photos, and all the movies I made to
help understand the articles. Then they removed the articles:

It should let you
see some of my articles about back surgery. It includes knee surgery
outcome articles, and retains some of the original photos, movies, and
comments, but links in those articles to my other Healthline articles
will not work. Healthline replaced them with their own.

Remember
that medicine and allied medical fields have a checkered history of
prescribing things that may seem to "work" at first, but
are not healthy. Practitioners
are not usually scientists; they often can only repeat what they were
told by people who sell pills and surgeries.

"There
is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be
done at all."
~ Peter Drucker

What To Do Every
Day To Prevent Back Pain

Notice
the huge amount of forward bending exercises, crunches, toe touching and
most PIlates and yoga moves done bending over. Most people do not need
more forward bending any more than they need a Tetanus shot every day

Count
how many times you bend and stoop and reach downward for things each
day. Imagine the accumulative pain to your back by bending wrong that
many times each day.

Lift
and bend for anything using a healthy good squat or lunge (different
foot positions for how you need to reach different things), not by
bending over.

Notice
bent forward and hunching positioning and exercises in fitness magazines.
Then notice your own habits.

First
thing in the morning, don't sit on the bed. Instead of sitting and rounding
your back first thing, turn over and lie face down. Prop gently on elbows,
but not so high that it strains, pinches, or hurts anywhere. Don't do
this if it hurts. It should not hurt to simply lie straight. It should
feel good and help you straighten out first thing. Get out of bed without
sitting.

Don't hold rigid "posture."
Healthy movement is dynamic. Stopping back pain does not mean never moving
the spine, and holding it in some posture. Healthy motion is crucial for
health.

Stand
and carry things without rounding your upper back forward or leaning the
upper body backward (exaggerating lumbar curve to the back or side).
More on swayback in the Abs article and
the Healthy Lifting and Carrying article.

When
sitting, it is not true that you must "keep
feet on floor" or keep flat thighs - parallel to the
ground. That is often repeated, but it does not change injurious mechanics,
and is not needed. Focus on the main issue not the trivia. Learn more
about this in the no-charge Sitting Healthy
article on this web site.

Dont
tighten your muscles to move or exercise. Gluteal and ab tightening is
a pop fitness fad, not healthy medicine or exercise. TIghtening impedes
movement and makes you feel tight and uncomfortable. You don't tighten
your throat to sing. You don't tighten your arm to scratch your nose.
You don't tighten your legs to run (or shouldn't). Learn to move your
torso into healthy positioning without tightening your abdominal or gluteal
muscles, or any muscles.

Walk,
run, and jump lightly. This doesn't mean to walk on tiptoe; your body
and cells needs motion and impact and impact for health and growth. However,
banging down without any shock absorbing action by your own muscles can
jolt your joints, especially if your positioning and mechanics are not
good.

Make
sure your pain is not from medical conditions (vascular, infection, shingles,
Lyme disease, Sickle Cell Anemia, other) or from many medicines known
to have body pain as side effects

Easy
Back Saver reminders for commuting, sitting, exercising and other activities-
click for Backsavers.

Don't
Change These Concepts and Methods Back To Ingrained MIstakes - These Methods
Work Only As Written and Intended

Henry
Louis Mencken said, "Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas
must be prepared to see them misunderstood" Even so, please
don't change my work back into what you know. This is different and works
differently than the pop fads that have become ingrained in fitness and
health. To paraphrase Bertrand Russell, "An untrained man's report
of what a knowledgeable man says is never accurate because he unconsciously
translates what he hears into something he can understand." My
work is primary source, and often not what we learned in school and the
gym. Remember, that is good.

How Long Does It Take
To Fix Back Pain?

You should begin to
feel a positive difference the same day
as you try everything above as presented
and intended. As you continue to stop causes, the injured
areas can continue repair and feeling better, a little more all the time.
Progress may not be a straight line but it should be definite. If you're
not feeling better right away, check the following:

If
it hurts you ARE doing it wrong. Stop and assess. Check
what you are doing compared to what is presented above. None of
the above are "exercises" to "do" - they are retraining
drills to learn to stop doing the things that
injure.

Are
you doing bad exercises from other sources? It is common to do a few movements
from my work, but continue or add common injurious exercises, stretches,
and posture rules, that slow recovery and re-injure.

Are
you tightening or clenching any muscles? Tight muscles can hurt and impede
healthy movement.

Are
you overcompensating? Are you making new bad movement habits that
seem opposite of original unhealthy movement, thinking that will "undo"
or fix?

Are
you going back to bad movement habits during the day? Check my free article
on Bad Exercises, this one on bad
stretches, and this one showing better health and understanding what
abdominal muscles really do with The Ab Revolution.

Is something else causing
the pain, such as infection, shingles, growths, Lyme disease, allergies,
Sickle Cell condition, side effects of medicines and supplements you take,
or other non-movement based situations?

It takes years to hurt
a disc and practice injurious muscle habits, but only days to start repair
once you no longer are injuring yourself. Make sure there is not something
else contributing to your pain. It is is almost always quick and easy to
start getting your life back and start feeling better right now. Don't wait.

Success
Story To Remember To Fix Right Away

Here is a charming
e-mail sent to me from Joan J.

"My
back hurt so bad I had to walk hunched over or not walk at all. My friend
advised me to see a chiropractor. So I did. He took $82 a week to adjust
my back twice a week and my insurance didn't cover it. He reassured
me my pain would get better with treatment. So I kept going until my
savings were almost gone :(

"In
desperation I turned to the internet and finally found Dr Bookspan.
She explained how to stand right to fix my horrible pain and she didn't
charge me a cent for her article! I was so grateful that I send her
a donation. Later I sent another one, when my back reminded me that
I stopped standing right. I straighten the way Dr. Bookspan showed me
and the pain goes away immediately. The funny thing is my back has learned
its lesson so well I don't need to send her a Thank You donation anymore!
Hmmm. That doesn't seem right."

~
Joan Johnston"

Joan runs a sanctuary
for abandoned animals where she rescues, treats, and finds homes for them.
I told her she could put her next donation toward their care where it
will help animals and people be happy together.

RAP
Song to Help Remember Good Bending

Here is a fun rap
to remember good bending as one of many components of back health. Rap
lyrics by Dr. Bookspan. Rapped for us by Raymond Lott, former United States
Marine Corps sergeant (RSonic, The Marine Rapper), who served
combat tours with infantry battalions in Iraq 2006 and Afghanistan 2008.
He made me these videos to help the world fix pain. (Note: I
wrote lyrics that when you bend wrong, back pain "IS NO" mystery.
Sgt. Lott changed it to, "ain't no...") Other than
that, learn and enjoy:

To
see the same rap with emphasis on the Backman!
(tm) drawings for better learning, click the Fix
Disc and Sciatica page.

To send your own Rhymes
and Rhythms for Remembering Health, see the Projects
Page.

To keep this article
a quick and easy summary, much is left out. The books
tell more.

Summary

Back
pain is not a mysterious "condition." People spend their day sitting,
working, walking, and driving in terrible positioning, hunching over the
computer, lifting and bending wrong all day, walking heavily, standing and
walking with too much inward curve in the lower spine, slouching all day,
then exercise in ways that strain and pressure discs and muscles and deliberately
train injurious movement habits like overarching and bad bending. People
do yoga and Pilates that forcibly pushes discs outward, and reinforces flexed
(bent forward) hip and forward bending. They take anti-inflammatory medications
for mechanical pain that is not inflammatory in nature, try remedies that
do not address the cause of the problem, do physical therapy in ways that
exacerbates the original problem, give up favorite activities, have surgery,
then return to previous injurious habits, and everyone is astonished that
they "tried everything and nothing seemed to work." It is like
eating butter and sugar all day, then waving your hands in the air for 5
minutes and saying "I don't understands why I don't lose weight, I
do my exercises."

Use
healthy positioning to stop the cause of disc damage and muscle pain and
they can repair themselves. Then, no need for pills or surgery or adjustments.

Does
my work mean you never do any flexion? Of course not - that is misunderstanding
the concepts. The idea is to notice if you spend most of your day that
way, then use flexion exercises on top of that. Then it is no mystery
why you hurt. Understand, don't memorize, blanket and arbitrary rules.

Dont
memorize rules and postures or think that an exercise or kind of exercise
will fix back pain, - which is more likely from a number of all your bad
movement habits. Understand what healthful movement needs and then move
accordingly for all you want to do. Use your muscles to reposition for
daily life - to get built in exercise. That is exercise as a lifestyle.

Please
don't combine conventional injurious stretches and exercises then come
back to me and say my work isn't fixing that.

Exercise
as a lifestyle does not mean going to a gym a few times a week. It means
how you move all day in real life. Get exercise as a lifestyle through
all-day healthy movement, so your back can mend, and you can do more than
before. People love to go to a gym to exercise their abs, then go back
to hyperlordosis for daily life. If they maintained neutral spine instead
of swayback, they would not have the pain and would get healthy abdominal
use all the time.

Exercise
may not fix most back pain, but it is good for you in general. It is crucial
for your health and recovery. Not all exercise is healthy, just like not
all food and medicine - there is junk food and unhealthy medicine. Use
my work to understand the concepts so that you can tell what is healthy
movement for yourself. Then apply it to your life - happy, healthy, active.

If
your lower back pain is from too much inward curve to the lower spine
(swayback, also called hyperlordosis), then stopping that slouching posture
and changing to neutral spine will feel better right away. Often people
"tuck the hip" too much, or tighten, or push their hip forward
instead of changing the tilt, then claim neutral spine is wrong or does
not work. The Abs Article tells more. Use
a side view mirror and learn to feel and tell how you are moving your
body and how to change a swayback to a neutral spine. If your pain is
not from a too large inward curve (swayback)
then check for other unhealthful movement patterns you may habitually
do, and change those, simply, without straining or forcing.

Please
do not e-mail me saying you are "doing the exercises 10 times"
and want me to tell you how to fix pain from bad positioning and bad bending.
Doing an exercise then going back to unhealthful body usage is missing
the point. Stop bad bending and unhealthful positioning and habits. Stop
the causes and the pain will stop. This free article summarizes. My books
tell more.

How
is your body positioning right now? The
point of exercise and therapy is missed if you dont learn to consciously
use healthful positioning the rest of the day for standing,
sitting, bending, having fun, and all you do.

PATIENCE
PROLONGS A CRISIS.
How long do you want to hurt?
Stop injurious positioning today. Don't wait.

Matt
R, pictured above at the top of Cape Lookout Lighthouse, wrote
shortly after working with me to fix a badly injured disc in May 2015, "Here's
some information about the Lighthouse to add to the story of what I'm doing
instead of the back surgery the doctors said was required. Thanks to you
I don't need the surgery. I thought the warning from the Lighthouse web
page was kind of fun...''Warning: The climb to the top is strenuous.
It may be hot, humid, noisy, and dim inside the lighthouse. Climbing the
207 steps to the gallery is roughly equal to climbing a 12-story building.'"
Matt has been hiking, climbing, and skiing since then, pain free and
mobile.

You
Dont Have To Live With Pain

What
To Do Next:

If
you enjoyed this article and want to help this web site,
throw a few dollars in the Donate box - secure and safe - through
PayPal.

Now
that your back is better you will save hundreds, maybe thousands
of dollarsnot needing unhealthful pills, surgery,
expensive products, and treatments. You can take a vacation,
give to the poor, and still click DONATE. Thank
you !

More Fun
Things to Do

Help
Without Donating. Use the Amazon book links below, with more, plus eBooks
on my BOOKS page.
Get anything you want, from song downloads, health and medical stuff, home
stuff, movies, whatever. As long as you click from my book links to get things
form Amazon (or Kobo), they will send me a small percentage (and no names,
so happy anonymous shopping). Larger purchase send more
to the site here, so get your next newspaper or magazine subscription, kitchen
stuff, computer, groceries, and lawnmower through these links. Get a whole
bunch of smaller things too, because Amazon also increases my pennies for
more items. Thank you for helping this site by shopping for things you want
anyway. Use the links for next time too.

Send
Your Success Stories and Photos to me on TWITTER!
Prizes for the best ones. Tweet nice notes and success stories how you
are better, which is my big reward. Follow me on Twitter @TheFitnessFixer
for health updates, quick & short.
Sharing buttons at the bottom of this page.

TYPOS
- Are You A Helpful Reader? - If you found typos, broken
links, or things needing correction on my site, tell me so I can fix
them to help everyone, with my thanks: typos@DrBookspan.com.

Mailing
list. I don't send
out any mails or keep any lists. For updates, info, articles, fun helpful
stuff whenever you want, look at my TWITTER
page. No sign-up or log-in needed. If you join ("follow")
then you can ask questions too: www.Twitter.com/TheFitnessFixer.

The
Fitness Fixer
- Dr. Bookspan IS The Fitness Fixer. My column
ran on Healthline from 2006 to 2010. After that, they took
them all away in favor of their own articles that sell medicines and
treatments, The BlogSpot archives still have some of them.
Check for articles on Achilles pain, foot, shoes, orthotics, knees,
back, nutrition, and more by alphabetical listing. Click
here for fun Index. Updates through Twitter, above.

Bookspan
Basics
- Quick training drills for yourself and your groups. Set up healthy
movement training programs for schools and groups, eventually as part
of my nationwide program.

Books
and eBooks. All my books together cost less than your pain killers,and
show you how to stop needing them and be healthier than before. Fun, easy to
read, illustrated, immediately helpful. More book descriptions and info, signed
books straight from the author, eBooks, Kindle, and more CLICK
my BOOKS page:

Healthy
Martial Arts - Top level book for all athletes to train
thinking, spirit, and top performance. Healthy Martial Arts is the top of
the line book (of my books) for exercises and athletes. Sun Tzu's "The
Art of War" is the classic strategy manual in business and power. "Healthy
Martial Arts" is the strategy manual for your life.

Diving
Physiology - New BLUE cover
edition. The diving cult classic! Hard to find. Written by Dr. Jolie Bookspan,
the Navy researcher who did the work in the field.BLUE
cover is the latest edition. (Green was old) Get the new BLUE.
Signed collectors edition, order directly from author through the BOOKS
page.Plus other
diving and hyperbaric medicine books and resources.